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Essay on Associate Justice, Anthony Kennedy
Introduction
Life tenure and an irreducible salary exist only to help judges maintain their independence and, hence, their impartiality. Impartiality is central to judging and to being a judge. When deciding cases, a judge’s race, sex, and religion are not relevant. A judge must push these factors to one side, in order to render a fair, reasoned judgment on the meaning of the law. A judge must attempt to keep at bay those passions, interests, and emotions that beset every frail human being. A judge is not a legislator, for whom it is entirely appropriate to consider personal and group interests. The ideal of justice is to be blind to such things (The National Law Journal, 1987|).
In theory, all the Presidents who have appointed Justices know this to be true. All the Senators who advise and consent to the appointments know this is true. The learned pundits of the national press know this is true And all citizens who have taken even minimal classes in civics know this is true. But entirely too many of the members of each group conveniently forget what it means to be a judge or Justice. Instead of impartiality in all matters, they demand partisanship, and by that choice they seek to corrupt the judges so they in turn will corrupt the Constitution, bending or breaking it so "their side" will win the cases they think are most important (Legal Times 14, 1987).
Kennedy may not have led a life devoted to the intellectual pursuit of an overarching jurisprudence, he did acknowledge a clear preference for a judicial philosophy of restraint. As occupied by Justice Kennedy, the Court's swing seat no longer functioned as a vote that balanced the liberal and conservative blocs by siding with one or the other from case to case (Mauro, 1992)....
